WWF, 1996

In 1996, with Wrestlemania XII just around the corner, Scott Hall declared his intentions to go to WCW after that year’s big event. Normally, this would mean a simple change in booking. Instead of Razor Ramon beating Goldust to regain his Intercontinental Title, he would just lose the match, putting over the champion and leaving the company without the title.

This time around, however, WCW represented a real threat to the Federation, so Vince McMahon, the same mature and level-headed businessman who brought the world The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior, decided not to simply job Hall out, but to drop him altogether from the biggest show and biggest payday of the year. It wasn’t that bad of a plan, as not only would it serve as a lesson to anyone else who wanted to jump ship to Atlanta (metaphorically; Atlanta has no seaport), but it would diminish Hall’s worth to WCW.

Judge for yourself how effective that was.

Once Vince got Scott Hall’s notice, he made The Bad Guy take a drug test. It was a long shot, I know, but somehow the plan worked; Hall failed the test, and Vince used it as an excuse to suspend him for six weeks. That meant no Wrestlemania for Razor.

Complicating things was that acting President Roddy Piper had already filmed a segment on Monday Night Raw announcing a match between Ramon and Goldust in a special stipulation match. Not a tuxedo match, although I did once create a video package for such a match (but it was just too hot for WWE’s 2012 campaign to rid the internet of embarrassing footage).

No, it would have been a special Miami Street Fight to be broadcast “via satellite” during the Wrestlemania telecast. Obviously, this segment never aired, and a replacement was cooked up at the last minute.

Vince needed Goldust in a match, and he also really wanted fans at the Arrowhead Pond to have to watch a match on a video screen, so he quickly put together the Hollywood Backlot Brawl, where Goldust would wrestle Piper himself. Yes, that would hypocritically push a star of the Old Generation into the spotlight while the Federation ripped WCW for doing exactly that, but Vince had already booked Jake Roberts and Ultimate Warrior into matches on the card, so why not?

Goldust arrived in his gold Cadillac and was greeted by Roddy Piper who, having already wet down the entire lot to make it slippery, wet down the car with a fire hose, too. You know, just in case Goldust had wanted to do some aerial moves off the hood or something.

The actual brawl was pretty decent. Sure, it may have been filmed the day before and featured a whole lot of camera cuts, but for once, that part made sense, since they were supposedly at a film set with lots of cameras…

…instead of, say, an empty backstage area.

And at least the time of day didn’t change from shot to shot, like in WCW’s “King of the Road” match pitting Barry Darsow against Dusty Rhodes’s son, Dustin. Whatever happened to that guy?

Roddy tossed Goldust around the lot, making the biggest mess of anyone’s catering in Federation history (until the 123 Kid got hold of Sunny’s chicken salad a few weeks later).

Goldust eventually got back into his car, ran Piper over, and fled the scene…

…causing Piper to hop into his white Ford Bronco to chase him down. It’s too bad this match didn’t take place in 1994, when OJ Simpson had his famous low-speed chase in LA with the same car, but alas, that kind of topical humor has a short shelf life, and besides —

Oh dear. Six months after the OJ verdict, and twenty months after the infamous Bronco chase on the LA freeway, WWF decided that there was still comedy gold to be mined from the Simpson trial (which, you may have noticed, had nothing whatsoever to do with Roddy’s or Goldust’s gimmick).

And so throughout Wrestlemania, we got these snippets of old news footage presented as if it were Roddy Piper in hot pursuit of Goldust. And the announcers had no idea why this footage looked so familiar!

Finally, both men’s cars arrived at the arena, where Goldust escaped in a bone-dry body suit that showed no signs of being hosed down by Piper just an hour and a half before. He must have changed while driving.

Roddy chased Goldy into the ring, where the Intercontinental Champion got the upper hand. And you know what that meant!

Yes, sexual molestation. First, there was this, uh, unusual set-up to a piledriver.

Then, there was the standard mounting and sensual chest rubbing.

And finally, there was this big ol’ smooch.

That last one set off Roddy, who went nuts…

…in a manner of speaking. He continued attacking his opponent’s testes…

Roddy then pantsed Goldust and dragged him around the ring. Yes, on a night when Marlena, Sunny, and Sable were all in the arena, it was Goldust who ended up in a thong and fishnet stockings. For the record, it took approximately 8 months from his first appearance to transform from “androgynous” to “gay” to “transvestite.”

A knee to the groin later…

…and Marlena covered up Goldust, who ran for higher ground (although, after this display, pretty much anything would have been considered, “higher ground”).

Roddy became the unofficial winner of the match, which never had a referee — I guess Judge Ito turned down the gig. Still, a victory over the Intercontinental Champion was pretty good for a guy in his forties who had already retired multiple times.

In fact, Piper was so thrilled with beating a champion in an embarrassing non-title match at the company’s biggest show of the year that he jumped to WCW to do it again at Starrcade.

A wrestling fan ever since the days of Wrestlemania IX, Art graduated from college in the same building where Art Donovan called King of the Ring 1994. He currently runs the "How Much Does This Guy Weigh?" blog, where he reviews New Generation-Era Monday Night Raws and Hasbro WWF figures.
Email at: art@wrestlecrap.com

Another great Induction Art! In fact, they’ve been running a 5 minute video package on the WWE Network about Dustin Rhodes’s career & a big part of said video has Dustin talking about this particular match. I’ve never heard of the story about the Kid/Sunny incident. Details please.

Sunny’s nickname in the locker room at that time was “the Kliq Chick” because of her relationship with Shawn Michaels. The hate came after Sunny broke things off with Shawn to go back to Candido. Although to hear other non-Kliq members tell the story (Check out the Cornette/Paul Bearer Shoot, for example), the Poo Poo Platter had more to do with her being a b**** than with retaliation from the Kliq.

As for why wrestlers use feces so often as part of ribs, the act itself does have a small amount of symbolism to it. Just like Luca Brasi sleeping with the fishes, crapping in someone’s bags/food/crown is reserved for workers who think their $h!t doesn’t stink.

Or to quote Bret Hart from his autobiography. “The mafia sends you a dead fish, but the Kliq $h!ts in your dinner.”

I caught Goldust’s appearance on Conan O’Brien’s show to promote the Backlot Brawl. There was an awkward moment when Goldust made some kind of double entendre about his “Backlot.” Dead silence, except for a single person in the studio audience, who thought it was hysterical.

I remember watching this as a 7 year old and being very disturbed by goldust acting in a homo sexual fashion and wanting piper to kick his ass but then when rowdy piper starting doing the same i thing a bit of me died on this ppv thank god the main event restored faith in wrasslin. I bet if razor was in the this match it would have gone over alot better i dont see scott hall as the man who would be kissing a another man at wretlemania

You think watching this was bad? My cable was experiencing a problem so I had three hours of no picture, but Vince’s ridiculous — yet completely audible — commentary.

Now imagine this match culminating in the ring, and everything just described above happening, and all you had to form your mental picture was Vince calling the *action*, while frequently screaming things like “Oh no! Look at that!”

Funny we bought the ppv, and went to the cable company got the box(even back then you had to get a box to hook up to your tv then punch in the station) but it messed up and wouldn’t come on, turned out in Memphis and apparently everywhere else they had problems, we got a refund. Now I’m glad I did miss this one. Just think people now demand refunds for their favorite superstar not being in a match or getting screwed in Main Event when people probably should demand it for crappy matches like that

I found the match entertaining for what it was. Not quite a slobberknocker, but it almost seemed like the only thing that was actually planned was the finish with everything else in between just letting Piper and Goldust do whatever the heck they felt like.

This is unrelated to the induction but I remember after seeing (and greatly enjoying) the Ultimate Warrior squash Hunter Hearst Helmsley in under 2 minutes, I wondered if the WWF would recreate what happened in Wrestlemania IX.

After witnessing and being disappointed seeing Shawn Michaels beat Bret Hart, I was hoping to see the Warrior come down, have Michaels turn heel again and the end result would be the Warrior squashing Michaels and winning the title thus setting up a future Hart vs. Warrior match.

At the time I was too young and naive to think such an occurrence would actually make Hart look bad since he overcame the Wrestlemania IX fiasco by becoming the champ. Was curious as to what a Hart-Warrior match would have looked like.

In my head at the time, this seemed like what was “best for business”.

This match, like the early Goldust character, is a guilty pleasure of mine. I always found Goldust’s flirtations to be great psychological warfare.

As for the comment about the bagpipes, it was on RAW, Roddy was calling in, Goldust was on guest commentary. This was when Roddy was “President” of the WWf. Goldust said “Mr. President, when I can I get to blow your bagpipe?”

Also, the time Goldust gave Ahmed Johnson mouth to mouth, that was hilarious.

I have my limits though, I wouldn’t want to see a three way match between Goldust, Danshoku Dino and Rico.